After three breakthroughs, the Mac has entered the M3 era, "Apple's official WeChat account described its newly released M3, M3PRO, and M3MAX based on a 3-nanometer chip after the end of Apple's product conference on October 31st. In order to more intuitively reflect the comprehensive transformation and upgrade brought by the M3 series chips to MacBook, Apple also demonstrated the advantages of Mac in handling a series of complex problems in a 2-minute short video before officially introducing the M3 series products, including not only drawing waveform diagrams to analyze electrocardiogram signals, but also drawing model diagrams of the Milky Way galaxy.
In addition to the M3 series products, what's even more interesting is that the launch event only took about half an hour, and all the videos of the event were filmed and recorded on the iPhone, and edited and packaged on the Mac.
When introducing the M3 series of chips, Apple CEO Cook claimed that their "performance is unparalleled," "technology is advanced," and "energy efficiency is extraordinary," which can bring a new experience to the Mac. It is reported that the new generation graphics processor equipped with the M3 series of chips is the largest graphics processor in Apple's chip history; The high-performance and energy-efficient cores equipped with the central processing unit are 30% and 50% faster than the corresponding cores in M1, respectively; In addition, the hardware accelerated ray tracker was first used on a Mac. John Srouji, Senior Vice President of Apple's Hardware Technology, stated that Apple chips have completely redefined the Mac experience, with various aspects of its architecture design aimed at achieving dual improvements in efficiency and energy efficiency.
Affected by the overall market situation in the consumer electronics industry, Apple's performance is also on a downward trend. In addition, in today's AI craze, Apple is also eager to showcase its attitude and boost MacBook sales. The release of the M3 chip is less than 10 months away from the release of the M2 chip. In terms of performance core speed, the M3 series has increased by 15% compared to the M2 series. It is reported that the M3 Max supports 128GB of unified memory and is capable of handling AI large models containing billions of parameters. Due to the support of the M3 chip, the latest iMac series has nearly doubled its efficiency compared to the M1 version. It is reported that the starting price of the new MacBook Pro is $1599.
From an external perspective, during the Snapdragon Summit that just passed, Qualcomm launched a new product called Snapdragon X Elite for the PC end, which adopts the same ARM architecture as Apple's M-series chips, adopts a 4nm process technology for the processor, and uses a self-developed Oryon core for the CPU. In addition, Qualcomm's ARM processors have received assistance from Microsoft, and Qualcomm has also emphasized the deployment of Snapdragon X Elite processors in AI.
Under the siege of competitors and the overall PC market downturn, the series of products equipped with M3 chips carry Apple's hope of reversing the situation.
According to the latest data released by market research firm Counterpoint Research, the global shipment volume of personal computers in the first quarter of 2023 was 56.7 million units, a year-on-year decrease of nearly 30%. This is the year with the lowest shipment volume in the first quarter in nearly a decade.
In addition, according to the global PC market shipment volume report for the third quarter of 2023 released by market research firms IDC and Gartner, among the top global PC manufacturers, including Lenovo, HP, Dell, Apple, and Asus, only HP achieved growth in shipment volume this quarter, while the other four manufacturers all experienced varying degrees of decline. It is worth noting that Apple's year-on-year decline was the highest, reaching 23.1%. From specific data, Apple's shipment volume for the quarter was 7.2 million units, with a market share of 10.6%. The shipment volume for the same period last year was 9.4 million units.
Previously, Apple Supply Chain Analyst Guo Mingxuan posted that it is expected that Apple's MacBook computer shipments will decrease by 25% -35% year-on-year in the fourth quarter of this year, while shipments for the entire year of 2023 are expected to decrease by about 30% or more.
In fact, Apple's performance is not only under pressure on the PC end, but according to Apple's 2023 Q3 financial report data, Apple's hardware product revenue is on a downward trend. Apple's revenue for this quarter was $81.797 billion, a decrease of 1.4% from $82.959 billion in the same period last year. Among them, iPhone (Apple phone) sales were $39.669 billion, a decrease of 2.5% from $40.665 billion in the same period last year; The revenue of the iPad (Apple tablet) was $5.791 billion, a decrease of nearly 30% from $7.224 billion in the same period last year; Mac's revenue was $6.84 billion, a decrease of 7.9%.
On the day before this press conference, on October 30th, the entry 'Apple China's official first price reduction' also appeared on Weibo hot searches. On JD and Tmall platforms, the iPhone 15 series prices of Apple's flagship stores began to decrease for the first time. According to market research firm IDC, Apple's shipment volume decreased by 4% in the third quarter. In addition, according to market research firm Counterpoint Research, the sales of the iPhone 15 series within 17 days of its debut in China decreased by 4.5% compared to the iPhone 14 series released in 2022.